


and by the hazard of the spotted die

by vaec (aosc)



Category: Assassin's Creed
Genre: Community: asscreedkinkmeme, Gen, Immortality, Pre-Slash
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-01-06
Updated: 2015-01-06
Packaged: 2018-03-05 10:45:25
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,107
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3117236
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/aosc/pseuds/vaec
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Shaun can recall vividly a time when his name was not Shaun, and the scent of rain wasn't mugged down heavy and thick by the screeching of rubber tires, and the stars weren't veiled with the fog of residue from a world bending double beneath exhaust gas, a toxic concoction of carbon monoxide and humanity's own foolishness.</p>
            </blockquote>





	and by the hazard of the spotted die

* * *

 

Shaun can recall vividly a time when his name was not Shaun, and the scent of rain wasn't mugged down heavy and thick by the screeching of rubber tires, and the stars weren't veiled with the fog of residue from a world bending double beneath exhaust gas, a toxic concoction of carbon monoxide and humanity's own foolishness. Its impending doom.  
  
  
  
He remembers being Ionnes, tracing down the characters of a dictated war report in an Acta Diurna with dry fingertips, reading slowly, savoring, in the midday heat of the warm season.  
  
  
  
These are his earliest memories. Worn, tapered, vignette-like in old sepia. He remembers the splatter of blood and guts and the stench of death in the gladiator arenas, and reads, shielded, turned half away from the world in a marble mansion in the heart of the city, of the slave uprising. He knows of the chasms of the world, an ever encompassing injustice passed down from the earliest dawn, that there are two types of people -- those who are born into wealth and opportunity, and those who cater to them. He remembers the die being cast, and the dictations, later, of the crossing over Rubicon, as he stands outside of the large building site which will rise towards the skies the Colosseum, clutching a binding of Gaius Julius Caesar's de Bello Gallico beneath the day's gazette page. _Here is a monument of limestone and arching architecture. A monument to man_ , he thinks. All is not for the Gods to revel in, but for man.  
  
  
  
He remembers not aging; waking to one day realize that the crow's feet crowding his master's eyes do not mirror on his own face. His mouth remains unmarred, his vision clear, and his strength does not diminish with the flow of time. He does not know what to do about it, and so he lets it be, fear growing, confusion, grappling with concepts which defy the human component.

 

He stands beside his master's high seat in the Pompeii spectacula, in the year of 51 BC, watching the two Equites having slain one other's horse, trudging through the bloodied sand now by foot, short swords raised in well practiced battle stance. The games are into their third day, and so far, they have been dull, in the opinions of inebriated senators, complaining loud to the hard set mouths of the gladiator's owners. His master waves a thick hand before him. "Ionnes, fetch us and our lovely companions more wine."

 

He collects the two empty wine pitchers, and make for the back of the room, ducking for the drapes. The many barrels of wine brought to the games are balanced precariously on top of another on the cellar level, and he climbs a round staircase, stretching long, to reach ground. The corridor signing for the servant's entrance to the cellars turn a sharp right. It smells of musty wood and clean stone, of cool air. Ionnes notes that he is alone, when he descends the stairs down to the storage base. He notes, at the bottom of the stairs, that he is not alone. How the silhouette of a tall man materializes, clad in gold and white, clean shaved and seemingly well off. He recognizes the preferred slave of Marcus Junius Brutus. Ionnes does not know his name.

 

"My master wishes for a brief meeting in private," he says, dark voice, passive tone. Ionnes is puzzled, mystified, but he nods, because to refuse a quaestor is nothing neither he nor his master has the capacity to do. "If my master so agrees," he replies. The man nods, short, and says no more, and he takes to the stairs behind Ionnes, fingers clutching a still empty pitcher. Ionnes refills his stoups, absent in everything now but the practiced movement of tapping, the tick of seconds it takes before the pitcher is full. He remains thinking, and barely remembers retaking the stairs.

 

Marcus Junius Brutus stays, lavished, in a large villa canting the ocean high atop the Pompeii slope, a white facade overlooking olive orchards to the south and the stretch of sea to the north, so far you could not hope to realize the distance to any mainland. Ionnes goes with his master, who has not thought twice of being the surprise personal invitee of the accomplished quaestor. He boasts, loud, and drinks, also loud, stretching out in a chair, calling for the slave girls with scarred shoulder blades and gold painted eyelids to his side, ignoring the wife he has put at the far end of the table.

 

He remembers being fetched by the same servant with whom he met at the games. His master is too preoccupied to notice him go. They trail deep into the villa, passing shadowed corridors with marble floors dusty pink, tribute busts of men of power lining the bone marrow walls.

 

Marcus Junius Brutus is a man of tall stature, and an odd triangular sigil clasping the mantle he wears at his breast. He motions for the guard at the doors to the study to be shut. Ionnes stands straight, though not at post, because he is no soldier, and should not address anyone as such. The quaestor does not cease to study him, even as he begins to speak, high latin, formal, but Ionnes has grasped it well for a long time, studied its intricacies and aversions.

 

"You are the man Ionnes of House Duilius," he says, not a question. Ionnes nods. He is not often called man, as in free, a man bound to no one. "Yes, Quaestor."

 

"I want for you to come with me, when these games are finished," says Brutus, bypassing formalities, and looks at him intently. "I trust you know why it is that you are not safe with your current master."

 

There is no room for Ionnes in which to question a man of such power. "Yes, Quaestor," he says. Brutus smiles, a thin gash of knowledge across his face.

 

These are his earliest memories. He has, at the time, no explanations to his questions. He is not allowed the luxury of questioning. He follows Brutus back to Rome, tailing high in the line of his caravan, beside the slave whom he learns bears the name of Flavius. It is not his given name, but it is who he has been shaped to be. The Quaestor is a graceful master, he says, and Ionnes follows the trails of sweat down his thick arms, his shaved head.

 

He remembers being selected to serve a grand feast in the year 50, where the men attending seem to know his distinctions, and who bring toast with the saying _Liberalis Circulum_ , said in unison, sated. He does not know, then, what it means. He only knows that when Gnaeus Magnus goes to public war against Caesar, many of the senators, legatus, and quaestors who have dined by Brutus' table, intone _Liberalis Circulum_ with gravitas, and proceed to leave, and Ionnes does not see many of them again, as though going out in a holy war and not expecting to return.

 

The holy war will, officially, in history books borrowed from the library, spread across the web, begin much later. He knows that it is, in fact, a war predating to when the Roman Republic was naught but a theory. When the planet itself was inherently young. But he does not know it until much later.  
  
  
  
He remembers trekking across the Syrian desert in 1194, hundreds and hundreds of years afterwards, his mind still grasping at the seams of memories and mirages slipping constantly from his reach. He is caught up in a storm, sand whirling, catching in the visible slice of skin just above his mouth, a large piece catching in his eyebrow; he feels pain -- of course he does, though pain is not a memory, a static, stripped down in his mind to the notion that blood dribbles in his eyelashes, and he hisses beneath the coarse linen scarf. He cannot tell time, not even by following the stars.  
  
  
  
He remembers a solemn man who takes him in, in Jerusalem, to tend to his fever, the lucid dreams induced by the sea of sand. A man who gifts him bread and dates and water, and cares for him daily, until one day he comments, casually, that "My friend, I believe you are ready for tea now." And Shaun -- John now, adapting, because nobody names their sons Ionnes now, pale and Christian and oddly comforted by the Islamic custom of inviting any man to dine at your table, thanks him profusely, in broken Arabic. He reads the Qur'an whilst confined to a sickbed, and picks up such a decent grasp of the language that his rescuer looks duly impressed. Only then does he voice quiet questions of the Assassins, whom he has heard whispers of in the streets of Rome, lifetimes and shards of unsure memories ago. At a grand marble table in Rome, serving wine to the pardoned praetor Brutus.  
  
  
  
The man looks at him with a half smile, and says, "Brother, here you are safe."  
  
  
  
His title is Dai, his name is Malik Al-Sayf. It is what Shaun learns before he is indoctrinated into the Order in Jerusalem.  
  
  
  
He has never wielded a sword as though it were an extension of his consciousness -- an unfolding of an arm, but he is taught to. He did follow his former masters into battle, but he did not take up arms. Now, he does. He buys a sturdy strip of freshly made leather off of a merchant passing through, and sits with his back to the purling fountain in the bureau with a needle and coarse thread, studying spread parchment detailing the crafting of a Novice belt and thinner knife sheathes to strap to his thighs.  
  
  
  
He is taught to mix poisons, and how to preserve it on the utmost tip of the hidden blade without letting it perish during the hot middays spent scouting locations. He meets with the Jerusalem phalanx web of spies and informants, and his largest task is a constant line of communication with its leaders, the head of a brothel, going by A'idah, who teaches him of stealth, of the utter importance of blending into a crowd.

 

He tells no one, but only because his questions precede his answers. He is not immortal, though he is surely skirting its borders. He has met with Death a number of times, through fever, and unfortunate circumstances, but he has not celebrated a birthday with the feeling of age creeping upon him since he were five and twenty. Since then, there has passed more than 1200 years, counting by the Julian calendar. It is unfathomable, so he has long since dispersed the notion of attempting to understand it.  
  
  
  
Shaun remembers meeting with the Levantine Mentor, not shortly after he has graduated from Novice to Assassin.  
  
  
  
He is no differently clad than any other Master, so when he swings down from a hold on the ledge to the bureau, Shaun says, "Assalam Alaykum," and inclines his head, from where he's situated eating his ransom of breakfast. Bread and dates and olives are piled atop a small plate, and he is writing slowly, diving his time equally between the chore and the pleasure, commenting Virgil's Aeneid in Arabic. He takes no further interest in the brother.  
  
  
  
"Ha," comes from behind, Malik's laugh not unkind, but not entirely soft. "You needn't be so courteous to this man."  
  
  
  
Shaun twists, puzzled, and lets his plate onto the floor. He looks to where the Jerusalem Dai is leaned onto the tabletop, ink and quills and a half finished map before him. He is smirking sardonically at the newcomer, whom has maintained his silence so far.  
  
  
  
"Assalam, Brother," he says, and tips his white hood back, to reveal a paler complexion than Shaun is used to seeing upon his brothers, and a heavily scarred lip. The assassin quirks an easy smile. "I realize you must know Dai Al-Sayf already, but forgive his persona. I am Altaïr."  
  
  
  
Shaun is up, straightening before this Mentor he has not previously met, to stand at post. "Forgive me, Mentor," he says, and bows his head to stare at the floor, custom, somewhere, to do so before the Roman Empire's ranked soldiers.  
  
  
  
"At ease, Brother. Before the Creed, we are all equals, regardless of our rank."  
  
  
  
"Novice," mutters Malik from Shaun's right hand side, and though he doesn't truly look the Mentor in the eye after this, his memories of the man afterwards are so vivid that he could sketch the starch cuts of cheekbones, the yellow eyes, the swaying, silent gait he walks with.  
  
  
  
But Shaun also knows that somehow, he does not age, bound to outlive, and so he recedes back into himself. The year is 1197, and there is much to do in a city like Jerusalem.  
  
  
  
Altaïr calls for him one day. Malik quirks a curious eyebrow, relaying this. "I do not know what you did, novice," he says, and sighs, as though the Mentor's ways are fathomable, and that he has long since accepted this with good natured grace and merely a hint of annoyance. "But you are to ride for Masyaf within the week."  
  
  
  
"Says who?" Shaun asks, puzzled, where he is fattening his belts and boots.  
  
  
  
"Says the one man whom you, unfortunately, cannot defy," Malik says.  
  
  
  
The ride to Masyaf from Jerusalem -- five days long with good pace, is dry, dusty, and Shaun is ambushed twice by mercenaries scouring the dead roads for prey and coin. He arrives past noon on the fifth day, working out tangles of dirt and matted sweat from the mane of the mare he rides, leaning across her neck to whisper his  _thank you_ s in both English and Arabic. She snorts, trampling the ground where they are at a standstill as the guard posted by the gate reads the letter he carries from the Mentor.  
  
  
  
"Safety and peace, Brother," one of them says, after a while, inclining his head and stepping aside for Shaun to ride past.

 

Masyaf is a handful of dusty buildings built into the slope of the mountain climbing towards the sea and the sky, like a pop of acorns laying pearly white just before the heavy stone fort at the village's very peak. He dismounts, and leads the mare by the reins, through the sleepy midday. Not many are out, facing the sun, and rightfully so. He isn't quite sure of what to do of his horse, so he leads her around a building proclaiming it is a stable on a sign with its paint flaking, and ties her in the shade, by a water trough, before continuing his climb towards the fort.  
  
  
  
He is met in the deep mouth of the castle entrance, its heavy gates splayed open, by Altaïr's barely there quirk of lips. Not quite a smile, not quite solemn. "John, is it?" The Mentor says, as though tasting the name, rolling it on the flat of his tongue. He nods. "Yes, Mentor, that is quite correct."  
  
  
  
"Malik speaks highly of you," Altaïr says, and gestures for him to come along, walk into the depths of the fort. "That doesn't just occur to anyone."  
  
  
  
  
"The Dai is a kind man, although he chooses to hide it well," Shaun replies, and brushes the hood from the high of his forehead. Altaïr laughs. It is a deep noise, emitting from the cavity in his breast, a little rough, as though fetched from dusty recesses, deep behind his ribs. "You know him well."  
  
  
  
"Not as well as I would like," Shaun replies, and looks as they walk, committing to memory the vaulting ceiling, the twisting staircases, the tall bookshelves. From across the grand room, up the initial stairs, are windows as tall as three men, pushed open, hinting at the ocean; a garden. Altaïr hums, noncommittal. "John," he says again, playing with its intonations, the name's ups and downs, little peaks in its pronunciation. Even in memory, Shaun recalls the spike of feeling in his own belly, as he does.

 

"Do you realize why you are here?" Altaïr looks at him with eyes that are yellow, brown, a little gold; the eyes of a hawk, a predator. He nods, though he doesn't, but there settles a feeling in the pit of his stomach that says  _everything comes to an end, and you do not._ "Yes, Mentor," he says, and remembers the solemn intonation of _Liberalis Circulum_. He realized only a short while ago that it led him onto this very path. That Brutus knew, and that Altaïr knows, now, though the two men remain mutually exclusive of one other.  
  
  
  
"Follow me," Altaïr says, and motions for the staircase to the left. "We'll speak privately in my study."  
  
  
  
Shaun remembers being seen through.  
  
  
  
"Any peculiar scars -- marks?" Altaïr asks, and trails three fingers across the patch of skin on Shaun's neck which makes him shudder, voluntarily or not.  
  
  
  
"No," he replies, and feels the pads of rough fingertips tug lightly on his hair. Altaïr quietens, and searches, not unlike a medical examiner, along the ridges of his vertebrae, mapping his ribcage, feeling the muscles in his shoulders and neck jump at touch. Shaun breathes quietly, hear his heartbeat reverberate throughout his body, thick and audible.  
  
  
  
"By some means or other, I've a rare type of sight," Altaïr says, and lets his hand drop, rounding Shaun and going behind the tall desk. He sits, recedes into his chair. The Mentor scrutinizes him. "It's a peculiar thing, which allows me to identify allies and foes. I've yet to work out the science at its heart, but I believe that intention is a tangible thing to me when I use it." He pauses, and leans forward onto his elbows, entwining his fingers and resting his chin on their top. Shaun averts his gaze.  
  
  
  
"I cannot read you," Altaïr says, finally.

 

Shaun lets the quiet dawn over them, unfolding like wet paper. "I am unsure of what to say, Mentor."

 

Altaïr splays his hands open. "Speak freely."

 

Shaun has never been a gambling man. Throughout the ages, he has never played on the fateful flip of a coin, or the mistrustful dealing hand, and never on the roll of a dice. He would not have attempted to sail through the Hellespont to engage the Athenian fleet, as Lysander. He would not have attempted to engage Hannibal at Cannae, as Varro. And he would not have crossed the Rubicon. He would not have had the courage to, though he understands all of these decisions made from a purely academic point of view. He has not tossed for his life. Perhaps it is why he cannot answer anything he wonders.

 

"I do not know the answer you seek," he says, slowly, "But I do know that I have lived for a very long time, longer than anyone should ever need do."

 

Altaïr remains passive, calculating, no doubt. Shaun remembers the wracking of his own body, surrendering to nerves, imperceptibly shaking. "I was born Ionnes, in the city of Rome, during the high years of the Republic. I do not know the answer to the question you are about to pose me. My longevity remains a mystery, a penance I feel I am partaking in, for a crime committed that I have no knowledge of."

 

The heavy air expands, grows, there are thoughts running through Shaun's head that do not make sense. The Mentor waits. Shaun says, almost imperceptibly, but in his throat, the words are large. " _Liberalis Circulum_ , one of my masters of old used to say whenever he dined with the rest of the senate. I did not know, at the time, what it meant. I think I do, now."

 

Altaïr rises suddenly, puncturing the moment. "The Apple has taught me to see," he says, "See a great many things, hidden from the plain eye. Perhaps it is true, what you claim. I do not know, but I do know that in the things which you do not know, lies great truths. I would like for you to remain here, John, if possible. I see a valuable mind in you, perhaps there are things you are able to teach me."

 

Shaun remembers The Mentor acknowledging his fault in assuming he is all-knowing, simply because he carries a grand title. And how he will occasionally stand in the gape of the tall window in his study, seeing, not seeing, across the big vast sea. How he is intent on Shaun calling him by his gifted name. "I was not born into this role," he says, "Unfortunate circumstance and war has seen me claim it. It does not elevate me above you. I am a simple man, beneath this djelleba."

 

And how Shaun is able to, during the few evenings in which he is invited to Altaïr's study, to be transcribed telling the stories he is allowed to tell in his seldom Arabic, of times passed, ages ran through the spaces between his fingers, awaken an urge in the Mentor. A hunger, scripted in flourishing pronouns and verbs, cluttering page after page, of the Roman Empire, of its characters and its sociolinguistics. Of Romulus, and of Brutus. Of Caesar, and of a thousand years spent losing memories, finding them, realizing that it will continue to be as this, possibly forever.

 

"You fill me at once with grief, and with hope, John," Altaïr says, distant, skimming his face as though Shaun's life is plain on his cheeks, in the cut of his forehead, on the bridge of his nose. "I grief for the people you will lose -- the people you have lost, to time, by which you are unaffected. But I hope, that you will aid me in bringing this war to an end."

 

Altaïr is intent, a slow burn of convincing leadership. Shaun remembers this with clarity, above all else. And because memory does not encompass the physical aspect of emotion, time has seen it fit to curve his path into the crossing ones of people who will manage to twist his stomach much the same as this man does.

  
  
He remembers --  
  
  
  
"Hey, c'mon, Shaun -- you okay?"  
  
  
  
He blinks, vaulting awake, and reels back on his chair's uneven legs, skidding a feet back from his desk before he realizes he's still here.  
  
  
  
"Woah, easy, buddy, I know I can look a bit -- off, but a guy might just take that for an insult."  
  
  
  
Shaun breathes deeply, catching the air he's missed, and coughs, looking up into a face achingly familiar, in more ways than one. The scar tissue on Desmond's lip, moving with where he's crouched by Shaun's set-up desk, half defensive, but his face is open with soothe, eyes brown and a little yellow and a little gold. _Bloody fuck_ , Shaun thinks, and runs a hand through his hair. "I'm fine, Desmond. Don't baby me."  
  
  
  
Desmond shrugs. "Yeah, I see ghosts pretty much all the time. I know that look."  
  
  
  
"Yes, well, perhaps you're starting to rub off. We'll have to ward the Animus, draw blood, buy a set of white contamination suits and masks." Shaun cocks an eyebrow, and wheels back into his private little tangle of cables and takeout boxes, stacked neatly and perched to the far left. His temples ache. Desmond remains.  
  
  
  
"We're a team, asshat, don't act like you're alone," Desmond says, and reaches out, stubborn as a mule, that one, and puts a large palm on Shaun's forearm. It shouldn't wreck him -- it shouldn't, and he'll curse himself violently each time, but _damn_ his weakness for this. He relaxes into the seat, sighs. "I'm fine," he mutters.  
  
  
  
"I didn't ask," Desmond replies, but when Shaun looks up, there's a smile luring on his features. As though he's won, the bastard. Shaun shrugs his hand off. If he were to look, though he doesn't, he imagines there'd be a brand there, red and fresh and burning. A hand put there by a thousand people before him, throughout the ages. He shakes his head, and rids himself of the memory of the touch of a ghost, based at his neck. It still prickles, occasionally.  
  
  
  
"Go back to your man cave, Desmond. Get some rest. I've work to do; servers to break." He waves towards the screen, black, bottomless, in standby.  
  
  
  
Desmond lingers, though only for a second, and then he nods. "Alright," he gives. "I'll see you later."  
  
  
  
He trails three fingers burning slow down Shaun's wrist, into the limp splay of his hand -- and then he's gone. Only Shaun remains.

**Author's Note:**

> on the names: shaun is originally derived from john, which is derived, further down the line, from the latin ioannes. so ionnes is a variation of it, hence using it.  
> on the setting: the roman is one of the first mentioned notable assassin brotherhoods, in which brutus was a prominent character (mainly mentioned in AC: project legacy, i think), so there's that. 
> 
> i did this as a mini-fill for the kink meme, prompt being an immortal shaun, having lived history, rather than just studied it. so i ran with it. and it grew bigger, and now i think i'm doing a series on it, when i'm done with exams. so there. the title is from shakespeare's _timon of athens_. bc, well. critic is my everything, you guys ♥


End file.
